RENOIR - Research for dark energy

Activities related to the Euclid project


Simulations of the NISP instrument

The RENOIR group is involved in numerical simulation activities in order to model images representative of what the Euclid telescope will return to the ground.

The numerical simulation of the images produced by Euclid has several interests:

  • Evaluate the performance of the instrument in advance.
  • Produce data to enable teams to develop their processing and analysis tools.
  • Understand the data that will be provided by the instrument, comparing it to the simulated data.

These activities are part of the OU-SIM (Organizational Unit SIMulation) dedicated to the development and deployment of Euclid instrument simulators. This results in international collaboration.

The RENOIR group is responsible for the development of the software simulating the images produced by the Near Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) spectrometer. This code is called TIPS (This Is a Pixel Simulator). The RENOIR group is also in charge of validating the simulator and validating the data produced.

From a catalog of sources (stars and galaxies), the catalog of associated spectra, the catalog of vignettes (shape of the galaxies) and the parameters on the configuration of the instrument, TIPS returns an image for each detector of the NISP. The simulator is in constant evolution, in order to take into account the maximum of instrumental effects, in connection with the teams responsible for the realization and characterization of the NISP.

Schéma descriptif du fonctionnement de TIPS

Diagram of the use of the TIPS simulator

TIPS is integrated into a pipeline that includes the other simulators of the Euclid instruments: Imagem (NISP photometer), VIS and EXT. Ultimately, this pipeline will be deployed in the various Science Data Center (SDC) so that large scale simulations can be launched.


Analysis